{"505041":{"#nid":"505041","#data":{"type":"event","title":"The packing of hard particles: From granular media, to metallic glasses, to protein cores.","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EThe packing of hard particles has fascinated scientists for centuries: from Kepler\u0027s conjecture about dense sphere packings, to Hales\u0027 experiments on the respiration ability of peas, to Bernal\u0027s studies of ball bearings that describe liquid structure.\u0026nbsp; In this talk, I will describe theoretical and computational studies that employ hard-particle models (with purely repulsive contact interactions) to describe: 1) the variation of the number of interparticle contacts in packings of frictional spheres, 2) the glass-forming ability of bulk metallic glasses (BMGs), and 3) the side chain conformations of hydrophobic residues in protein cores. While it may be obvious that hard-particle models are able to quantitatively describe static packings of macroscopic grains, it may be a surprise that hard-particle models can be used to design new BMGs and can be employed to predict side chain conformations in protein cores.\u0026nbsp; I will show that in these three disparate systems the hard-particle model provides key physical insights that are obscured with more complex models.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"The packing of hard particles: From granular media, to metallic glasses, to protein cores."}],"uid":"27664","created_gmt":"2016-02-23 11:08:23","changed_gmt":"2017-04-13 21:16:31","author":"Alison Morain","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","field_event_time":{"event_time_start":"2016-03-28T12:00:00-04:00","event_time_end":"2016-03-28T13:00:00-04:00","event_time_end_last":"2016-03-28T13:00:00-04:00","gmt_time_start":"2016-03-28 16:00:00","gmt_time_end":"2016-03-28 17:00:00","gmt_time_end_last":"2016-03-28 17:00:00","rrule":null,"timezone":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"groups":[{"id":"126011","name":"School of Physics"}],"categories":[],"keywords":[{"id":"166937","name":"School of Physics"},{"id":"166896","name":"seminar"}],"core_research_areas":[],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[{"id":"1795","name":"Seminar\/Lecture\/Colloquium"}],"invited_audience":[{"id":"78751","name":"Undergraduate students"},{"id":"78761","name":"Faculty\/Staff"},{"id":"174045","name":"Graduate students"}],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003E\u003Ca href=\u0022mailto:amorain@gatech.edu\u0022\u003Eamorain@gatech.edu\u003C\/a\u003E\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":[],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}